Google Voice is a free faux-telephone service developed by Google. It is based on GrandCentral, a voice-calling service Google acquired for $95 million in 2007. Google rebranded GrandCentral as Google Voice in 2009, with a number of new features. In 2014, Google Voice features were integrated into Google Hangouts, Google’s video chat and instant-messaging client. Google Voice provides voice call, call forwarding, voicemail, and texting services. Users can choose a phone number to associate with their calls and messages from surrounding area codes. Multiple devices associated with the same Google Account are also associated with the same phone number; calls to that number ring simultaneously, and users can switch between those devices during calls. U.S. residents also have access to conference calls, call screening, call blocking, and voice transcriptions of text messages or voicemail. Calls can be made from both smartphones and computers. Users can also make international calls at a starting rate of $.01 per minute.

The creeping shadow that is Google+ is about to touch one of the company's most beloved products: Google Voice. The company's free VoIP phone-call, texting, voicemail and voicemail-transcription product will soon merge with the Google+ Hangouts apps ...

Since the beginning of time -- or what feels like it -- we've been chained to our homes and desks by landlines. Ten years ago, landlines were the main vehicle of communication, used to run a business or keep in touch with family. Today, we have endle...

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Watch out Siri, Google is bringing its Voice Search app to the iPhone and iPad. As with the Android version, the app taps into Google's Knowledge Graph function to consider the user's location and the context of what is being searched. This means tha...

You've probably been receiving "wrong number" phone calls for as long as you can remember, but have you ever been contacted by a wrong number on Google Voice? More importantly, has the resulting instant message conversation even been as funny as this...

An update to Google Takeout, the search giant's data export service, now allows Google Voice users to retrieve all of their account data. "We believe that our users should be able to export any data that they create in (or import into) one of our man...

Google has expanded the scope of Gmail's phone calling feature, reducing the cost of international phone calls and making the feature available in 38 languages. The product, which is powered by Google Voice, will be rolling out across the world in th...

The Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo does not just manufacture technology. They make Do machines -- super-powered creation engines designed to help the people who do, do more, do better, do in brand new ways. Speech and voice rec...

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